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Friday, October 31, 2014

It is that time again!
For some reason every autumn I get the urge to do tea towels. WovenBeauty's best selling tea towels are these black
and grey towels with a different accent colour each year, this year the colour
is raspberry red.

These tea towels are such a fun weave that I didn't get many photos of the process. But here are the pirns showing the colours that I used for the plaid borders.Off to the side you can see some of the empty
cones that a tea towel project always produces.

Part of the fun of weaving tea towels is the buildup on the cloth beam, that sense of accomplishment as the tea towels pile up neatly.

I put enough warp on for six tea towels plus a bit extra; well, at least I thought
that I had.As you can see I wove past
the heddles on shafts 9-12 and up to the heddles on shaft 8 in order to squeeze out the final towel.

Thank goodness for the low profile on the Schacht-end
feed shuttle; I had really no shed to speak of but I needed to squeak out the last few
inches for the hem of the tea towel.I
had about 2 inches before the reed ; it was really tight.

But the tea towels came out spectacularly!Each tea towel has a different plaid border, but they all line up beautifully.For Sale.

The garden shot for the end of the post is a purple
Chrysanthemum, which was flattened the very next night by the beginning of our 'Storm Season'....apparently we don't get winter her on Vancouver Island!

Friday, October 17, 2014

I’m still slowly working through the silk scarf warps I painted last year ~ who knew it would take me sooooooo long to get through them!!

This warp was not the most promising because it was basically the ‘use up’ of all the left over dyes. I kept picking it up and then like a magpie, putting it down again when another, more exciting warp caught my eye.

Even on drying out day I put it on the end because it was so drab!!!

I had developed a 6 shaft networked turned crackle weave pattern a while ago and this warp was going to be the maiden voyage for it. Once I had the warp on the loom, I felt much more hopeful as the amazing colours popped and I immediately knew that I had several choices of weft. The warp has plum, fuscia, green, blue….I was spoiled for choice!

My first weft choice was soft plum ~ not so good. Then onto cedar green ~ my favourite so far; finally I tried lemon grass ~ yup this was the winner!

Well, it was the winner until I got a few inches woven and found out that the weft absolutely killed the pattern! My usual weft conundrum!

As soon as I tried the purple I was gobsmacked….this looks like an oil slick on water, stunningly beautiful! The rounded crackle drops just enhance the oil slick theme.

I was so pleased with this scarf that I emailed this photo of the unfinished scarf to my friend Susan telling her that I thought it was the most beautiful of the silk scarves.

Susan now has a new winter scarf and this scarf takes the record as the fastest scarf in an out of Etsy for me ….ever!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

For me this is the last of the hand dyed silk warps from
last summer.I dyed it lengthwise using 2/3 moss green and 1/3 navy blue with the two colour encouraged to blend along
the centre edge.

The weft auditioning is always hard with these warps you
just never know what colour is going to work.The first three colours are creamy silk, gold and rust.The idea behind the cream was the hope that
it would look like waves crashing onto the beach – nope.The rust was for an autumnal feel – nope. Surprisingly gold was the best!

The pattern is the same crackle pattern from the limegreen silk scarf, but it looks
totally different with this scarf.The
moss green blends into the gold making a lowlight which almost makes the
pattern almost appear 3D, so pretty!